Editorial: Good news on the grapevine

Published 6:09 pm, Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Photo: FILE Photo

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In this April 10, 2006, file photo raisin farmer Marvin Horne stands in a field of grapevines planted in 1918 next to his home in Kerman, Calif. The Supreme Court said June 22 that a program that lets the government take raisins away from farmers to help reduce supply and boost market prices is unconstitutional. less

In this April 10, 2006, file photo raisin farmer Marvin Horne stands in a field of grapevines planted in 1918 next to his home in Kerman, Calif. The Supreme Court said June 22 that a program that lets the ... more

Photo: FILE Photo

Editorial: Good news on the grapevine

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On a typical day, business at the Supreme Court is solemn and sober, so who can blame the justices for having a little fun with a case about an unconstitutional federal raisin grab?

The Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 laid the legal basis for something called the Raisin Administrative Committee, which operates rather like a government-sponsored cartel, purportedly to protect the public from over- or under-production of raisins, but actually to protect growers from price competition.

A little over a decade ago, a pair of California raisin-growers named Marvin and Laura Horne introduced a new wrinkle by devoting their entire crop to sale on the free market, rather than setting some of it aside as “reserve raisins” for the government, per the prevailing “marketing order,” i.e., federally sponsored supply-restriction scheme.

When the feds tried to fine them $680,000, the Hornes sued, arguing that the mandatory set-aside was a “taking” contrary to the Fifth Amendment, which says, in part, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

In an occasionally tongue-in-cheek opinion by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — sample witticism: “Raisins are not dangerous pesticides; they are a healthy snack” — the court usefully clarified that the Fifth Amendment protects uncompensated takings of personal property, not merely real estate, as a lower court had ruled.

The 8-to-1 majority also held that the residual benefits to the Hornes of the raisin marketing order — their share of what the government gets from re-selling those “reserve raisins” it does not simply give away — do not amount to “just compensation.”

The government may regulate the right to sell produce in interstate commerce, the court ruled, but it can’t “hold it hostage.”

This was a relatively easy case in which to establish these points, since the raisin marketing order is an especially blunt government intervention for the sake of a relatively obscure public benefit. Notably, the system was put in place decades ago at the request of raisin producers, not raisin consumers.

And there is only one other like it in operation, for tart cherries.

However, the educational value of the case extends much more widely: to federal agriculture policy in general, which can fairly be characterized as a series of New Deal-vintage controls and subsidies that have not grown any more rational with age.

Like the raisin program, their stated purpose is to ensure a steady food supply, but their actual effect is to raise prices, entrench and enrich incumbent producers and, generally, cover the entire subject of food production and distribution in a blanket of jargon that only farmers and their lawyers and lobbyists understand.

Today, the Supreme Court deregulated the raisins; it’s up to Congress to liberate sugar, milk, corn, soybeans and all the other commodities still entangled in an outmoded web of regulations and corporate welfare.